The Kobold Gospel:

The dirty claws of Gorma clawed at the ground impatiently, it was an automatic habit. The shaman was dragging his feet on what direction to go, which usually meant no one had any idea where to go. They had a good run marauding the last couple days and all the eager killers were getting itchy. Victory never satisfies for long, and confidence was nervously draining away.

Gorma was a kobold, a lanky trash heap of a creature, mindless in any sort of cleanliness or planning. He followed the Great Claw. He was born in the frantic clutch of his heritage, life was short and glory shorter. Dragons, however were not, they were mighty beasts that wielded the Great Claw with hot breath and molten eyes. Gorma would have killed his shaman for a chance at a dragon’s glory. All his kobold kin would, murder was the name of the game.

The previous shaman was killed by the new shaman, and he would probably be killed by the next. The same went for the war leaders, you killed when you had a chance at Dragonglory and leadership didn’t see it. If you passed up Dragonglory the Great Claw would chew you up when you died, and you would rot in a tumbling hell of teeth. If you chased Dragonglory in life, then you would be added to the great hoard, a shining example of strength.

Missing your shot at Dragonglory was a punishable offense, cowardice was disciplined with mutilation. Some kobolds lacked fingers, ears, eyes and hands. All shamans lacked at least one eye, but not because of punishment, but from sacrifice. If you had found Dragonglory and lived you could pluck your eye out, a token that passed into the afterlife and see behind the great veil and into the hoard of the Great Claw.

Gorma believed every bit of what he was taught, his spear was sharp, and he was eager for his chance at Dragonglory. Yesterday he thought see saw a glimmer, but the village was undefended, just peaceful humans. Their village had little metal, no gold, useless foodstuffs, nothing a kobold warrior of the Great Claw would ever eat. They indulged a little murder, but it wasn’t enough, they wanted a juicy target, something that necessitated the use of fire. Where there was fire, there was glory.

The shaman had a juicy target after all. It was a small town with a forge, and with a forge, it meant metal. The Great Claw desires gold above all else, and the shaman was promising the warriors dreams of a shimmering hoard. The frenzy started to echo in drums and shrieks, the mob of clawed creatures becoming a single flame of avarice. They were ready to die for the chance at Dragonglory.

The town was able to raise the alarm and defend itself. The kobold warriors threw their spears and clawed at the fortifications, unable to enter the town. There was little damage, and after a handful of kobolds were slain, their courage failed. They retreated, Gorma flailed his long arms, empty of plunder or weapons. The kobolds regrouped, the shaman’s trumpet sounded a rally point. Not a single kobold returned with a spear, all throwing them without finding a mark.

The shaman squinted his eye over each of them as they arrived, scorning them all for their shame. Gorma remained silent and awaited the judgement of the shaman, they each lowered their head and dug their claws in the dirt. The shaman riffled through his bag, producing a metal tube filled with holes. The shaman grunted out his command with certain authority.

The commandment was death, the group must return to the town, throw their bodies on the fortification, their cowardice must be repaid. The shaman promised the metal tube would bring the Great Claw, and they must prove their Dragonglory with their blood. Gorma had no choice, he would not miss his chance at Dragonglory twice in the same day.

The kobolds slinked back near the town, waiting until the fortifications had eased and the alarm was not blaring. They had no plan, as soon as they got within the fortifications, they let out a piercing howl. The alarm rose within seconds and the town rose up against them. The shaman blew his metal tube, notes flying on the wind in violent harmonies, reaching the ears of a nearby dragon.

The one-call flute was the last tool of the kobold shaman. They played it when there could be gold and when they faced lethal defeat. Gorma heard the flute as townsfolk stabbed at his skinny corpse. He listened and watched the sky with his last breath. Before it all went black he wanted to see the Great Claw.

The black shadow silenced the town with a wailing shriek, all eyes turned to the sky. A great shape and wavy heat distortion could be seen on the walls and roofs of the town. The shadows stretched out as the creature descended. The quickly changing temperature produced beads of the foreheads of the townsfolk. The air grew thick and wrapped itself around their throats. Some coughed and gasped, most covering their mouths as they squinted past the sun. The shape formed two wings like a bird but rather than feathers, green scales shimmered, adding to the sun’s blindness.

Two heads coiling around each other, unwrapping serpentines descending and separating. Both heads breathing in deep, an audible yawn in the same note as the one-call flute. 

The two heads unleashed their breath upon the town. The first breath covered the homes, a green vapor filled the air, and the coughing turned lethal. Chlorine gas billowed out unto the streets and snuck under every trapdoor, every cellar, every closet, every pair of lungs burned and cried in short feeble screams. 

The second head let loose a flaming plume at the villagers surrounding the dying kobolds. The fire was explosive, consuming vast amounts of oxygen as it left the dragon’s mouth. A shockwave knocked over most the villagers, then their clothes ignited as the inferno rolled over their bones. The dragon screeching out the kobold hymnal of the Great Claw.

Gorma only saw a little fire before he died, but he knew that his Dragonglory was now part of hoard of the Great Claw.

The Rope:

Maria enjoyed her walk home from community college. She lived nearby, a small house with her folks. She had graduated high school a year ago, and she was ready to put that chapter of her life in a box somewhere and forget about it. Last year her friend Fernando had hung himself, 2 days before graduation, the light at the end of the 4-year tunnel had turned into a blinding spotlight.

She wondered if Fernando would have enjoyed community college, he had always enjoyed school, it was the pressure that got him. The suffocation of potential, nailed into his head with hammers oddly shaped like advice. He was dead now and the day was beautiful, the sun flowed down in golden warmth. The trees rustled only a little and fresh smell of the spring quarter had captured Maria’s attention. 

There were new people, and the new world opened up. High school was time served, and now the bright possibilities showed a larger world. The wider vision started the first day at the campus, Maria’s imagination blossomed at the vast variety of people, ideas, and topics. High school has a way of shielding children from reality, but here, the world was filled with all sorts of cogs you could be, all sorts of jobs and people you could turn into. Maria had no idea what she wanted to be, but she loved the imagination without the commitment.

Maria’s walk to campus went by a freeway on ramp, a bustle of thousands of cars zooming through the arteries of the city. She thought of cities as living things, with hearts and stomachs and blood vessels, each represented by some function: garbage trucks, fire stations, hospitals, schools and of course skyscrapers. Fire stations reminded her of the human immune system, schools and shopping centers like a stomach filled with nutrients for the social cells to deliver to their ridged cells called houses. Skyscrapers were like mold that developed long and elegant filaments of growth, all around her she saw life, blooming in a symbolic reflection of green fields.

This idea was something she and Fernando talked about at length, her first long conversation. Maria’s parents didn’t like symbolism or anything with more than one meaning, to them words meant one thing and the city was certainly not anything like the green fields. Those conversations were cut short and diverted towards practical matters like what Maria was going to college for. What job do you want? What are you going to do with your life?

There seemed to be no greater difficulty that trying to determine what she wanted. She wished Fernando was around, sometimes speaking the words was enough, a release of the swirling potential, distilled into plain words. There was nothing quite like getting drunk from the possibilities of youth, swimming into the deep black of the future. The words were not enough for Fernando. The memory soured the walk a little. It had been a year and the pain had ebbed, Maria felt guilty about it, she had vowed never to forget Fernando. After only a year she could feel the memory getting dusty, she winced and continued her walk to campus.

As she passed the freeway on ramp she noticed a long rope hanging from a street light. The metal pole faced the freeway and the rope dangled just barley above her fingers. Maria felt compelled, perhaps by curiosity, perhaps the strangeness of its placement begging for some sort of conformation of its existence. Maria jumped feebly and grazed the bottom of the rope with her fingers. 

Maria put her bags down and positioned herself along side the freeway ramp. She eyed the rope and positioned herself for a better jump. The rhythmic sounds of cars and trucks marched beside her in hazy focus. She jumped and caught the rope with one hand, slipping back to the ground. Redoubling her efforts, she tried again and grabbed the bottom of the rope firmly with both hands, hanging a couple inches from the ground. Maria bent her legs and looked down imaging that she was higher up looking down over a great distance.

The rope was sturdy, and Maria rocked back and forth slowly, like she would as a kid, each pass getting longer and longer. The rope was nearly 30 feet and the rocking covered the ground, not the freeway. She felt a little exhilaration swinging so close to the freeway and started to lengthen the swing. Within a few moments she was traveling the edge of the freeway in pleasant swoops with the feeling of inertia carrying her further each time.

The rope swing was cresting, reaching nearly 180 degrees. Each swing was taking a solid 4 seconds of rushing force, the air turning to wind as her hair blinded her on the return swing. Like on the swing sets of her childhood the swing reached the point of tipping over the top, a huge 30 ft circle trying to complete itself. Her stomach caught up to her throat and she let it out in a scream.

The crest was reached with a momentary lapse of inertia as the force failed to swing over the top. A moment of weightlessness and then a 30-foot plummet down towards the ground. Maria twisted herself and angled her body towards the freeway to try and eat some slack on the rope. Cars and trucks honked helplessly as she plummeted down the first 10 feet, her angle attempt paid off and the twist cause the rope swing to gather some inertia back, swinging her out over the freeway. The motion resembling a tether ball wrapping around a pole. 

Maria held on tightly and when the ground was within reach she let go, tumbling onto the grass next to the freeway, her hair echoing the frantic landing. She screamed a small shriek and stopped moving. Her heartbeat pounding out an emergency, her arms exhausted from holding on and her hair wrapping around her face. Maria cleared the hair from her vision and looked at the dangling rope, still alive from the swoop and the swing. 

With a smile she gathered her bag and walked the rest of the way to community college. She thought of Fernando again; perhaps there isn’t any difference between swinging and hanging.

The 3 Gifts:

Xenobia put the book down. She was done. She was done reading their pages and organizing their spines. There was simply nothing left to read. All the spines were in their proper place, the library, much as it was, had finally settled into an eternal slumber.

She was the only person that looked at any of the books recently. Everywhere around her was towering shelves of tomes and manuscripts, journals and histories. She had read them all, remembered each one of their chapters and verses. Xenobia’s brain was easily capable of such storage and memory. To her countries were mere inches on a map, history mere footnotes of greater tides, empires were children in their infancy. All things were small to Xenobia and all things equal….

It was precisely because of equality that she was finished. She had reached the horizon of senselessness finally. It had taken all of the books of this library to open her eyes to the wastes of their blank pages. Each moment of history being valued equally tends to haze out any distinction.

Xenobia took 3 books with her as she left the library. She also took a sense of fatalism, she knew that these 3 books would have to be delivered to their fated recipients. The red book would go to a young girl who wasn’t born yet. The book contained a physical method to consume grief, the book was written specifically for her. The writer perhaps had served a term as librarian, much as Xenobia did.

The blue book was to be left on the corner of 3^rd and Alberta street. It would endure some rain damage and then be rescued by a depressed nun who thought that all of existence was an outright bad idea. The blue book would serve to confirm her suspicion as the book was written by dead soldiers and children. Their dried vocal cords dictating their experiences with dry and hollow words.

The third book, a small white book containing only blank pages. This book was for Xenobia and she shared none of her reasons with the Endless Library.

Xenobia climbed up a spiral staircase out of the library. The library occupying a forgotten tomb deep in the belly of the earth. The stair case stretched multiple miles, time disappeared and Xenobia continued upwards without pause. The spiral widening with each spiral turn until each stair step smoothed out into a flat path. The path encircled upwards, growing ever wider until it became a horizontal tunnel. The exit poured out the soft light of the sun.

The exit tunnel was covered in soft earth beneath a large tree, the roots framed the hole. Xenobia took the moment in, feeling the UV radiation breaking down her skin ever so slowly. She had her destinations marked, her book delivery would not be delayed.

The first stop was the house of Jessica Six. The was wonderful display of beauty and function, utilizing the most from the ecology of movement. Each object that inhabited the house was designed and purposefully stored in the most efficient and aesthetically appealing way. Only the highest social strata of human clones occupied such houses.

Jessica Six had seen the same blank pages as Xenobia, she had seen them in a vision many years before and had a feeling that this day would come. Xenobia knocked on the door and waited for Jessica. Their exchange was one of heavy conversation, Xenobia knew the visions of Jessica Six, she had read it in one of the books of the Endless Library. The red book was to be given to her unborn daughter. Jessica Seven would usher in a new age armed with the contents of the book.

Such a fate weighs more than most people can handle. Jessica Six however had seen the black wastes, and now her patience was effortless. She stored the book and gave it to her daughter when she turned 8. The child learned her fate from its pages, she was to consume of whole of grief from the great well of human tragedy. All sorrows would flow through her like a black tidal wave, which would cover the world in bleak mourning. This event will later be known as the Ninth Wave.

The next location was the corner street of neglect. The book had to be damaged by rain before reading. Its contents reflecting much of the same senselessness.  Xenobia put the book it its pre-written location, right behind the trashcan and the street light. The nun would discover it a few days later, her melancholy hanging around her neck in the shape of an overused rosary..

The book would open up easily and turn to just the right page. The words would worm into the nun’s head and beginning making a cocoon. Weeks later a moth would emerge within her skull, beating its new wings against the back of the nun’s eyes. She would write it off as a headache for a few days as she finished the book, trying to reassure herself that it was all in her head. Once the book was finished and certainty washed her clean of doubt, she burned the book, finishing the damage she had interrupted by rescuing it from the elements.

The book held all sorts of dictation of the dead, children who lived only a few years in agony or anguish of every kind. Soldiers recited their experiences facing the void of meaninglessness and dying for no reason. Each example further convinced the nun that existence, for the most part was something that needed to end, some hungry beast that chewed on people, gnashing them between its cosmic molars. 

Such a view of the world is exhausting, but the nun continued on, at least until the moth saw any flame through the nun’s eyes. It flapped its wings violently at the sight of fire, bruising and beating the brain of the tortured nun. She tolerated such suffering for 2 years before finally immolating herself. The moth was both satisfied and confused at the beautiful sight. The moth died too, but it didn’t have time to determine if life was worth living, it died innocent of anything except fire and frustration. 

The 3^rd book, a little white book was the reward Xenobia gave herself. It was filled with blank pages and reading its contents wiped all memory, all knowledge from her. Xenobia sat on a small bench by the ocean and read the book intently. The calm amnesia dissolved all knowledge within Xenobia, her sense of fatalism disintegrating into the salty air. 

When she finished, her eyes glassed over, and she walked to the shore’s edge. She threw the little white book into the ocean. The last gift had been given, and the tide was starting to rise.

The Blank Page:

The white sheet sits motionless on the desk, unmarked, untouched. The page has been minted from a factory, one of thousands, identical and indistinct from each other. Shipped and packaged, wrapped and ready to be consumed, opened and used. The page was made with a purpose.

As I look over its empty face, the anticipation grows, it rises along with dread. What horrors, what beauty, what mindless numbers can be marked upon the surface? The beginning is filled with such potential, a swirling nebula of possibility waiting to turn into a star.

You can look over the pristine landscape a moment, imagining the ideas the page could contain. Every idea could fall upon it, from the recollection of miniscule history or senseless political drivel. From the grim focus of fear to the pale face of poetry. Perhaps a hopeless a journey that travels from the mountains to the sea, from the rivers to the city, the very edges of the world could be poured into the boundaries of the blank and empty page.

The weight of such potential wanders around the page a moment. As if some invisible tornado is inspecting a jail yard, patrolling its new territory. The boundaries clearly seen, they are unalterable, not a single word can escape the edges. The unseen servant spins until it finally settles, and the black lines begin their march down the landscape of a deserted and flat world.

With each word written, the phrases spill out a little of their meaning. Soon an idea forms, and with them brings all the ideas connected to it, like a wide thrown fishing net, the page is quickly filled with the creatures of the void. All sorts of connections, allegory, metaphors, associations, long one-sided conversations with senseless punchlines. They crawl around on the page, now free from the abyss of their pulpy prison.

The creatures of the paper oblivion have wonderous story to tell: From a great starless ocean, a luminous system of clouds slinks over a horizon. Colors of every hue streak the black sky and reflect perfectly underneath. The colors are not defined in terms of appearance but in terms of essence. Each streak lets out a taste of clarity. Crystalline calm certainty provides a distraction of the endless dark ocean, which stretches to the blackest corners of the horizon, leaving patches of reflection.  The story dribbles until the end. The streaks and the reflection on the ocean leave a predictable sense of understanding and connection.

Such is the glamour of the paper creatures. They tease up order, throwing up fireworks, confetti, and bright lights. We call them stories, little imps of reason. Trying with all their might to keep us from being confounded, desperate to fill the blank page with color and clarity. To leave the page empty is a sin, a divine transgression, emptiness can not remain.

If you left the page blank, it would continue on existing effortlessly until the edges of the paper dissolved from natural forces. It would disappear easily back into the endless ocean. There would be no trouble, no bothersome words to interrupt the silence. No one would give it any more consideration than the thousands of other factory-printed pages.

Perhaps one day in the future when we will build gigantic factories, maybe one for each person. A factory that prints blank pages for everyone to fill, a personal machine servant. Everyone is given endless paper to write out everything in their head, every history, every fiction. Everything is known, knowledge has found its edges, just like the edges of the paper.  However, due to physical limitations, there will be nothing left to write.

Once everything is written down, like a bureaucratic eternity, once the whole of knowledge is known, then, we can start throwing it away. We will find a way to get rid of this crumpled up mountain of filled pages. The disposal of such a mountain will only take a small fire. Someone will find an objectionable piece of paper with senseless ramblings scribbled on its ink-scarred face and set it ablaze.

The mountain won’t take very long to burn either, fire is a friend of the blank page, always eager to return to the pristine nothingness.

Armor of the Red Flower:

Albert liked his new vase, a thoughtful gift from a dear friend. The vase was a black and red piece of pottery, well balanced in form and the weight felt stable. The red detail had a pleasant Ikebana stylization to it. Little red swirls resembling flowers climbed up the lips of the opening. Near the bottom, patterns of widely spaced rings descended into tighter lines. The bottom was a deep red ring that illuminated the lighter accents of the top.

Albert had admired the vase for years. He kept it in his front room and often found himself staring into the red rings and swirls of delicate decoration. However, it only takes a reckless moment to shatter such beauty.

The vase was broken with the accidental swing of Albert’s travel luggage. This of course happened on his way out the door, rushed and frantic he left the broken pieces to lay in the dark until he returned from his trip. They laid like little bleeding triangle shards. A singular large piece began humming softly a few moments after Albert left to his trip.

The humming grew louder, and although no one was there to witness the growing phenomena, it crackled with an audible rumble and snap. The rumbling focused slightly, and the sounds of metal and leather could be identified. The source of the sound was that of a dark spot that grew at the base of the broken vase. The scene unfolded within a miniature world, were a miniature sun eclipsed the broken pieces of pottery and the floor turned an opaque black.

A few moments later the sound stopped, and the shadow dispersed. The floor was now occupied by a full suit of metallic ebony armor, the shine and gloss reflected even in the late hours of the front room. Day after day the armor sat motionless until Albert returned from his trip. Albert was not expecting to nearly trip over a suit of armor in his front room.

After putting his belongings in their appropriate places and starting his laundry, he investigated what appeared to be a foreign object left by some unknown source. Albert scratched his cheek trying to recall which of his friends would have meant this as a gift, or perhaps a joke which may have sprouted from a drunken conversation in a thrift store. Such occurrences were not uncommon for Albert and his friends.

The suit of armor was gathered up and laid on the dinner table. Albert contacted some of his friends and received no clues. He investigated the armor carefully looking for any insight as to who or how this metal and leather thing got into his house. The armor had no tag, no contact information, no contemporary marks of note.

The armor was composed of a black metallic breast plate in the style of a conquistador, like two clam shells coming together in the center of the chest. Leather straps lined the shoulders and sides. There seemed worn and used. The vambraces and pauldrons were shelled slightly, layered pieces of a hammered dull iron composite. Perhaps stainless steel? No rust was discovered or any marks of age other than the worn straps. There was a red lined decoration, very similar to the broken vase.

The red lining resembled flowers, but only on parts of the armor as if the armor was unfinished. The thin flowers were the most detailed on the front of the helmet, which resembled an exaggerated lizard or dragon head. The red lines pouring out of the face plate in rosy swirls.

Without a doubt, the armor fascinated Albert, his brain turning over the mystery, the style, the similar beauty to his broken vase. All the unknowns fogged over his brain as he turned over the pieces and investigated each one precisely. When he looked over the greaves, whose coloring mirrored the base of the vase precisely in deep red lines, he had a most electric idea; the armor would probably fit him.

Albert changed his clothes to fit inside the armor, nothing too heavy or slack. He began at the bottom, strapping the greaves and thigh pieces slowly. Then after seeing them on, his pace quickened. The armor fit exactly, it felt snug and safe, as if the curves and length had been tailored for him.  The holes for the straps fell effortlessly into a familiar position. Albert admired himself in the mirror and took a few pictures on his device.

The last piece was the helmet. The chin strap was snug, the inner helmet was comfortable, and again seemed to be made precisely for Albert’s head.

Albert looked himself over in the mirror, a black and red warrior. Certainly, someone had determined his measurements and gifted this to him. This wonderful sense of admiration was replaced quite quickly by vertigo. The mirror appeared to be growing larger.

The room stretched out and swelled, the table rose, the windows came alive and reached out to match the dimensions of the front room. The seconds ticked by in a slow-motion panic. The room was growing, he was shrinking, and the armor shrunk with him. He screamed, but only a little squeak escaped the helmet.

Albert frantically tried to remove the armor, however he discovered that his arms and fingers were slowly turning into pottery. His fingers stiffened, and his mouth felt tight. His legs stopped moving and straightened up. He tried to raise his hands to get at the chin strap, but they cemented into place above his head.

As Albert grew smaller, his armor and his body began to fuse together, and within minutes his body could not move at all.

A few hours later, one of Albert’s friends came to his house. They could not find Albert, nor the armor he had asked about. They did however find a black and red vase, not in pieces, but fully formed on the floor in front of the mirror. The friend examined the vase and some of the red paint looked fresh, as if a new flower had just been painted on it.

Kingdom of Dust:

There is no wandering into the Kingdom of Dust, there is no ability to roam. You can not walk from one side to the other, nor travel around it. The dimensions of such a place should be perhaps measured in existential terms:  It is the place things where things decay into obscurity. There is nothing that remains within existence that describes, details or keeps an inventory of these lost things.

The Kingdom of Dust has claimed countless empires, endless cultures, people, nations, basements, attics, oceans of tears, distant stars, and at some point, the Kingdom of Dust will claim existence itself. This is to say; these things are or will be forgotten. They fall back into indistinction and decay into whatever smaller parts they are made of, perhaps used to create new things, perhaps used for nothing at all ever again, useless cogs sitting motionless at the bottom of a cosmic trash pile. Regardless, they cease to be the things that they once were.

Sometimes mere accidents prevent things from falling into its fuzzy territory. Such is the fate of the library of Ashurbanipal. A tongue twister named after a cruel ruler from the 7^th Century B.C.E. Who collected all sorts of clay tablets, wax scrolls, and papyrus literature of all kinds. This library stood as the brightest flame for its time, a beacon of information and history allowing a type of retrospect that empires build their foundations on.

Of course, such bright beacons of literature are burned, scoured or erased from existence. They plummet quickly into the hazy pages of history, perhaps lasting only a couple generations of living memory.  The library was burned sometime around 613 B.C.E., ashes and dirt piled on top to quicken the library’s decent into nothingness.

However, the burning of the clay tablets baked them partially, accidentally preserving their contents in a shallow grave. Centuries later, when the library was unearthed, the baked clay tablets had not quite fallen into the Kingdom of Dust. They remained legible, containing the epic of Gilgamesh, a hero story about traveling the torrents of the gods with his savage friend Enkidu. The ancient tale owing its survival to an accidental fire caused by the furnace of revolution.

So, it seems that by luck the tablets survived, by an incidental thermal reaction.

Human beings, with their perception and categorical brains, constant remembering and retelling, have managed to migrate from the Kingdom of Dust. We have found ways to keep the tidal shoreline from rising, we can keep the dust away from the scrolls and the books. We have found more elaborate empires to build, more detailed stories to scribe, allowing, through practical applications; more human beings to exist.

One by one we march from the Kingdom of Dust, our heads blind at birth, and when they close we slip back into the formless boundaries of its territory. It may take a few generations, perhaps we may live in the memories of others for thousands of years. We may forget, in our hubris that empires are mortal, cultures die, people blend into a wider society and their individual qualities disappear. Slowly over the eons all things return to their homeland, they return back into a world of primordial clutter. Like an endless junkyard, guarded by a decrepit Cerberus barking feebly.

If you find some road leading to this cosmic junkyard and look around without recognizing anything. You may find yourself grasping to any definition, any sense of order. You may riffle through the rusted metal and discarded war machines, you may find a deeper understanding through a desperate need for meaning. Some return from the Kingdom of Dust, enthusiastic historians with trinkets from beyond the veil of the lost, some promethean idealist hoping to find some linchpin in the debris of human history.

Those that return are often cloaked in certainty, glowing with an oily and iridescent enlightenment. Like Joseph and his coat of many colors, displaying a dizzying nausea of wonderment. Of course, over time the glamour washes off and the colors run back into the delta of dull meaninglessness. History repeats, the waves of time rise, and all is forgotten again.

This mechanism of forgetting is a small-time scale to human beings who rarely experience anything from the larger realms of existences. We may mark our latticed time tables on terrestrial rotations, comets or lunar shadows. We have not experienced star birth, galactic collisions, the churning of nebulas or anything on a time scale of millions of years. We are bound to the graveyard of higher worlds. 

This inability extends below as well, to the very small. While we are caught in the torrents of the atomic and microbial, their worlds are often invisible to our categorical minds. We can see their worlds only in concept, microscopes, chemicals and books. Their generations and empires passing so quickly that we often remove them with a sanitary wipe on the kitchen sink. We are typically mindless to the world of the small. 

The edge of our awareness seems to be based on time scale and size. When they move we move but without consideration, as if one foot was in the Kingdom of Dust, casually heaped up with all the other feet. When the larger tides of greater blackness move, and a large arrival graces the Kingdom of Dust, we may by way of circumstance be swept away in our entirety. Some gamma ray burst may annihilate every shred of evidence that human beings ever existed. By extension of imagination, an even greater blackness may annihilate the very concept of existence, an idea based solely on the perception of middle minded creatures that writhe in awe at some trinkets they find in the graveyard of the past. 

If you find this idea bleak, worry not, for even the loss of all humanity, all existence is simply part of a tide of greater blackness. That everything conceived or inventoried returns to the indistinct realm called the Kingdom of Dust. Perhaps this description may act as a sense of order for those uncomfortable with nothing being anything, with the idea of a cosmic clutter, things without names written on their atoms. That perhaps the torrent of existence isn’t anything particular. Perhaps acknowledging existence may be giving it too much credit, and the royal road to the Kingdom of Dust is merely the basement of neglect.

The Witch of November:

Sometimes in the darkest lakes there is a greater blackness that is born. A little seed of shadows that forms a shell of icy water. The seed waits and only grows under very specific circumstances. If these conditions are not met, the seed can drift on the bottom unchanged for years, patient and cruel.

The conditions are quite common for the world of human beings. The seed requires the mournful wailing of loss, whether by ship wreck, heartbreak, suicide or murder. The remnants of those bodies, pieces of those lights that have sunk to the bottom. As they sink to the bottom, they bring with them the tears of those that wept for them.

The seed takes hundreds of bodies, sometimes thousands of mourners pouring their eyes into the waters before the seed grows. Such an event happens once in an age or two. Due to the monolithic force of progress, such seeds have become more common. There are millions of more people, millions of mournful, grieving eyes to add their sorrow to the great oceans and lakes of the world.

Some people think the rise of the water is a mechanical consequence, ice caps melting or some such thing. While they are correct, the true cause is the gathering of sorrow. One day such tears may drown the world. There are billions of more suffering human beings, and there will be billions more without a doubt.

The seed grows slowly. The icy shell cracks after decades of a slow and glacial oblivion. Within is a spectral wraith, a white and gray creature that perhaps could be confused with a large jellyfish or giant squid. However, this spectral creature is nether living nor ambivalent.

The phantasm of the deep is born with the icy tears of anguish within its ethereal tendrils, its eyes gleaming out a mournful reflection of the sorrow of the deep waters. From the beginning of its creation, its instinct is clear and its heart black. The white appendages resemble that of a beautiful woman, the wisps surrounding its body appear to be tattered clothes, translucent and rotten. Yet these are only a glamour, an attempt to make sense of such a creature.

For years the ghost may swim on the bottom, searching for a few more bodies drown in grief, perhaps lost child or love-sick sailor. Each small meal teases the hunger of the spectre, leaving it more voracious, more eager to rise higher to the surface.

Hunger eventually compels them to the edges of shorelines, harbors and stormy lakes. They follow the cold winds around waiting for shipwrecks. Like vultures waiting for carrion they encircle patiently, anticipating the inevitable.

One such of these creatures had grown to a great size, due primarily to the winter storms. Her appendages had grown long and lanky, bearing  taloned hands of bitter white. She grew very hungry and very eager, eventually she rose to the surface.

It was a lazy November evening, a little fire and friends by a lake. 23 people had gathered in merriment. The Witch of November beached herself while they were cooking marshmallows. Her gigantic mass of wisps and lace rose up nearly 20 feet tall. She floated like a phantasm towards the fire light. Someone shrieked that a woman was coming out of the lake. They stood in terror as the eyes of the Witch looked over them, beaming out decades of sorrow and darkness. The greater blackness in which she came from oozed out of her eyes.

There were 3 survivors, the rest had followed the ghost back into the water, overcome with loss. The greater blackness swallowed them whole and the Witch of November sunk down to the deep, temporally satisfied.

Annually she returns, perhaps a friendly campsite, a couple walking down the beach, a lonely dock worker or pier fisherman. The brackish waters betray no warning and offer no reason. Her hunger is as senseless as the sorrow that feeds her.

The Fuse box:

The two men couldn’t have hurried any faster, urgency boiled their brains. One carried a small black briefcase and the other fingered a pair of pliers. The briefcase offered no clues to its contents nor did the black leather seem important to the two men. They were primarily occupied with the pliers.

They were bent over a tangle of electronics, wires leading to what may be considered an explosive. The pliers passing back forth between the two men in silence. Slowly the tangle seemed to resemble a more orderly thing, the wires attached to the device in short and understandable distances.

When the two men stepped back from their work the focus of their work became easy to see. They were repairing a fuse box, the briefcase was stored in the basement and obstructed access to the fuse box. The briefcase was then placed careful against the wall. The two men returned to their sense of urgency as their quest continued through the house.

The basement of the detangled fuse box contained a curious amount of kitchen cabinets. At least 3 distinct sets of cabinetry were piece-mealed into the corners of the basement. One of such cabinet sets was quite close to a moist cement wall. Rot had taken hold and then ignored. Each year, the house had slipped deeper into the Kingdom of Dust.

The two men contorted slightly around the cabinet sets, navigating their way to the stairs. Behind them a sharp sound resembling nails across a glass window startled the men. When they turned to the source of the sound, nothing was to be found. The basement had windows that reached exactly ground level, unused, except perhaps for a little sunlight to come into the dark.

If there was something on the other side of the glass basement windows, it did not reveal itself. The men looked cautiously at each other, acknowledging that they heard the sound. The sound repeated again, interrupting the speculation with a sliver of panic. The men were able to catch the source this time. The tiny yellow feet of a chicken could be seen at the edge of the window. Then as the men watched, a small beak raked across the window, repeating the sound again in clear view.

The sense of order eased the tension of the two men, who like most human beings despise the unexplained. As if renewed by the conclusion of the chicken, they hurried up the stairs to see if their fuse box surgery facilitated electricity.

The surgery was a success as the lights in the house became responsive. Licks of light flooded the hallways and lost corners. The house groaned, waking up from a long slumber hurt. The bathroom fans whirled up in noisy complaints, and from another room an old radio screamed out static. The two men rushed to the radio room, quickly silencing the senseless scream from the dead frequency. 

The silence returned to the room and the two men nervously looked at each other again with questioning eyes. The radio lay still only for a moment before sparking near the wall, dust and age at created a short. The radio shot back on, this time to a clear frequency. The men watched and listened for a few paralyzing seconds. The smoke growing near the wall, but the surprise held them still.

The song floating from the radio, a version of “I’ll Fly Away” and for a measure, the two men listened: “I’ll fly away old glory, I’ll fly away in the morning, When I die, Hallelujah, by and by, I’ll fly away”

When the verse finished, the radio stopped as another electric pop ended the moment. The smoke settled, and the two men returned to their near panicked state. The radio was dead, the power was out again and that would mean another trip into the basement to reset the fuse box.

Their domestic necromancy rested on those lyrics, raising the house back out of the Kingdom of Dust. 

The Sermon of the Iron Caldron:

The room smells like sandalwood, someone has prepared the mood. The candlelight roams the walls in flickering shadows. The floor is grouted in smooth tiles and stained in a red ichor. At its center sits a large iron caldron.

There are only ghosts that use the room these days, wispy leftovers preserved in ritual. Some human beings keep the candles refreshed and the air sweet, but they are only caretakers, decorated janitors for a place abandoned of its original purpose.

The frail ghosts will not speak, nor use their useless spectral limbs for anything other than mimicking the shadows. Their memories have all but dissolved into the salty brine of time. Yet a few remain, a few still sing their songs of the dead. Their afterlife vocal organs producing vague sounds resembling wind blowing over the gravestones of forgotten generations. Each song containing a chorus of tattered and disembodied minds. Their ebbing memories forming a single frustrated sound that seems to dwell solely in the hollow chasm of the Iron Caldron at the center of the room.

If the spectral prisoners of the Iron Caldron could speak with human voices and human tongues they would only be able to recite the experience of their imprisonment. Every other aspect of their lives has been burned away.

You would have to turn back the pages of time to the year 350 B.C.E. The great book of human history would illuminate the words from its tattered pages, the contents of spectral imprisonment. Before we read such contents aloud, let us offer the blank pages of history our veins, that one day, we may haunt the living with the dead songs of our deeds.

The great book creaks and whines with the contortion of its spine. Let’s focus on the past, let it coalesce and brighten the colors of the shadowed room. Let us read aloud the pages of history:

The Book: Chapter 45742122 Verse 22:

 The Iron Caldron has just been installed at the center of the ritual space. Beneath the Caldron are 3 stout pillars with chiseled symbols of dead gods. Busy workers finish the stonework with professional satisfaction. The censors are placed at the edges of room, they have not yet burned any frankincense or sandalwood, but the supplicants are eager and ready.

We watch as the motion of history whirls by and the room is emptied of the last of the construction. A week passes in silence and no one enters. Then, a new moon rises overhead without a single sliver of white. The night is the deepest black of the year. Robed humans begin a slow and intentional procession into the room. One by one they encircle the Iron Caldron, standing equidistant to each other, heads bowed in reverent focus.

At the end of a few somber moments each participant produces a leather wineskin and pours the contents into the Iron Caldron. The liquid is a thick syrup of blood, obtained through murder or chance. The blood is that of their enemies; captured marauders, oath breakers and political rivals. Each robed figure pours the blood of this year’s enemies into the Iron Caldron.

Kindling beneath the Caldron is added. The fire is lit, and the flame encouraged. Each of the participants watch as the blood boils into a reduction of hard film at the bottom of the Iron Caldron. The fire is left to finish the ritual as the iron of the blood is added to the Caldron’s metal body. The participants return to their lives, confident that their enemies are forever imprisoned within the belly of the Iron Caldron.

We can watch this scene from the pages of history, and each year more blood will be poured into the Iron Caldron. We can flip each page and see the same rite, another year of burning the blood. When we have had our fill, our curiosity slaked, we can close the book of history. The spine cracks again as we flip to the blank and pristine pages of the present.

The pages call to us to continue the ritual, to fill the empty pages with our blood and burn the offering. Whether it be in the belly of the Iron Caldron or the actions of our lives, we will all end up on the pages of history.